Thursday, February 7, 2019

We took a day and visited the Churaumi Aquarium on the north side of the island of Okinawa, Japan. We love to visit this aquarium and see the whale sharks and rays in the Kuroshio Sea exhibit through huge viewing windows. The spot pattern on a whale shark is unique to each one, like fingerprints for people.

Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa

I want to create glass that is unique to Okinawa, so I decided to make a whale shark and a spotted ray. After creating the sketches, I cut out a plastic templates to transfer the images to glass.

Whale shark sketch

The next step was to cut out the complex shape on a glass ring saw. I could hand cut the piece, but there would be quite a bit of waste.

Cutting out a whale shark on a glass ring saw.

After cleaning the glass, I added the unique spot pattern with Colors For Earth enamels and set the whale shark on top of an ocean background created in a separate firing.

Adding the spot pattern with glass enamels

I also created a spotted eagle ray so the whale shark would have a happy friend to swim with!